M.J. Akbar's Blog :Editorial Director of The Sunday Guardian, published from Delhi, India on Sunday, published from London.

Monday, November 12, 2012

Prez Obama’s rainbow finds its pot of gold

Out of Turn

Prez Obama’s rainbow finds its pot of gold

M.J. Akbar

Any
politician who gets elected thanks to the worst financial crisis since
America's Great Depression in 1929, and needs the most violent hurricane in a
century to get re-elected, obviously has the vote of the Almighty. Many
Americans remain convinced that the divine benevolence Barack Hussein Obama
enjoys is from a God called Allah, rather than the bearded old man of Christian
iconography. Barack is not an English word, let alone an American one; it
derives from the Arabic baraka, meaning blessing. Others, and Donald Trump
comes to mind, accept that Obama was born, but wish he hadn't been, and
certainly not in Hawai.

Obama
faced three potentially fatal obstacles, two of them snake-pits: race and
religion. Certainty about his colour, and uncertainty about his faith, cemented
the outraged determination of conservatives to limit America's first black
President to one term. The third hurdle, the economy, was colour neutral in
theory, but whites reacted more negatively than other voters. Obama lost
the white vote in every category: 45 to 51 among those between 18-29; 38 to 59
among the 39-44 group; 38 to 61 among the middle-aged, 45-64; and 44 to 65 in
the old. But you can also see a new America emerging from this barren
chrysalis. Obama's vote increases as the voter gets younger. The future
is with him. Overall, Obama got 60% of young support as compared to only 37%
for Mitt Romney.

Romney
was straight from Republican central casting: well-brushed hair, a moderate
public voice, a mean private discourse, all things to all people, and a
business CV straight from a tax consultant's manual. What he did not have was
sufficient population. The white electorate in America has dropped from 84% in
1984 to 72%, and will dip to 69% by 2016 as the demographic easel continues to
mix colours. Romney invested in geography, as a look at any results
graphic will confirm. Obama placed his bet on demography, and sliced Romney
along the jugular.

Leadership
is the art of extracting diamonds out of a coalmine. In a remarkable display of
reverse engineering, with advice from that professor emeritus of American
politics Bill Clinton, Obama mobilized the margins through positive
discrimination, from rights for children of illegal immigrants to support
for same-sex marriage and unprecedented health care for the impoverished, mainly
Blacks. Every vote he got was obtained by commitment and craftwork
through his term in office.

Obama
could depend on the insular and insensitive Republican right to rescue
him when he needed help most, as when the argument seemed to be fading
from his grasp. One American satirist, Andy Borowitz, described the Republican
message with less exaggeration than humour normally demands: 'We're strongly
opposed to FEMA and health care but basically OK with rape...When God wants to
create a hurricane or make a woman pregnant, big government should get out of
the way.'

The
antediluvian Republican challenge to abortion helped Obama cleave enough of the
white women's vote to ensure that two per cent margin which made his election
safe. Any disappointment with Obama was not enough to dissolve their fear of
the ruthless anti-abortion lobby.

Obama
rearranged his base into a sparkling coalition of minorities, till the
sum became greater than its parts. It is entirely consistent that white
liberals, women and men, who voted for Obama were also a minority within their
demographic.

But
no engineering has ever been reversed as adeptly as Obama's repositioning
of a still convalescent economy. He tried to display some green
shoots: IMF has projected that the American economy will grow at 3% next
year; 900,000 jobs a month were being lost in 2004, today 170,000
are being added. But they were lost in the incandescent rage of election
advertising. Obama deftly turned the argument into a contest between the possessed
and the dispossessed. Obama remains in the White House because of support
from who suffered most in a faltering economy, the poor, the deprived and
those struggling to enter the middle class.

Obama
united the differences of America and inspired the collective to rise above
snake-pits to claim a new centre. He has reset politics on a
fulcrum that just might send Republicans into oblivion. In 2016 Democrats
will have a white candidate sailing in the breeze of economic recovery,
and anchored in the grateful commitment of diverse minorities. Republicans were
once the party of Abraham Lincoln, guardians of national unity and uplift.
Obama is Lincoln's child now, and Democrats the Lincoln vehicle. If
Republicans do not change they will be forgotten like the Whigs of Lincoln's
time.

A
sigh of relief was audible across the world when Obama won. There was sullen
anger in only three places: Republican America; Israeli Prime Minister
Netanyahu's office; and Drone-peppered Pakistan. But that is a thought
for another day.